Visual Journal Page Examples

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~Gathering Ideas/Brainstorming

These pages are where you begin documenting your ideas. You may be given a strong prompt by your teacher or you will have chosen something yourself that you want to explore. It could be a concept, an idea, an object – and you begin to take photos/gather images/words and sketch initial ideas. Mind maps and contact pages of photos are good ideas for this stage.

Some ideas to get you started:

mind map an idea or theme
create lists of your initial idea/theme/prompt
search through newspapers/magazines or articles that interest you
do a photo walk – take photos of all you observe and discuss your impressions
choose different artworks you are interested in looking at
document art gallery visits

This page is highly useful – as it shows that the student (studying pumpkins) has literally gone to observe pumpkins in REAL LIFE, taken photos and then sketched what they had observed.

~Observational Drawing Studies

The most important way to improve in drawing and painting is to draw what you see. You can find lots of timed life drawing videos on youtube to use for your studies. As always, as you go, note your observations/thoughts along your sketches.

What observation drawings would be relevant to your study? A few examples: people, faces, hands, feet, trees, cars, buildings, chairs, plants…

Reflection

Reflect on a piece you’ve just finished, or a work in-progress.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of your piece? (How are you using the elements and principles?)
What techniques did you use?
How will you revise it to make it stronger?
How is this piece connected to your theme?
What does it reveal about your personal ideas?
What artists/other ideas influenced this piece?

~Media Exploration, Techniques & Skills

This is where you show your strong technical skills. Focus on objects that you choose to represent your ideas and/or objects that you are going to use to symbolize your concepts – or just objects that are interesting to you. Experiment with many different media and techniques. Play with shadow, highlights, ink, colour, etc. etc. etc.

Some ideas you can do to show off your technical skills:

you can take photos of various views of an object and then sketch out various details
use various materials (pencil, charcoal, ink, watercolour, paint)
go through distortion techniques and play around with how different objects can be distorted
metamorphosis one object into another
these can be observations of different places/things/people
these can be different views of the same thing using different media

This a great example of a student’s exploration of high tea. The different media and close of up tea cup detail shows strong observations and epic technical skill.

~Inspiration Artist

(Artist Analysis/Explorations/Critical Study & Recreations)

Pick a work of art that speaks to your heart, that you will use to influence your own studio work. Closely observe and analyze the artwork. A ton of biographical information about the artist isn't necessary (unless you are inspired by it). It’s good to know the years the artist worked, country of origin and culture of the artist as well as other artists’ that the artist would be influenced by. More importantly is your analysis of their artwork.

Instead of making pages showing all of the artist’s work. Choose one or two works, analize using Feldman’s analysis and then re-create the work (or parts of the work) observing the choices the artist made (what materials were used, how the artist blended and/or what choices were needed to create certain effects, how difficult it is for you to recreate and/or how you think the artist did it and how you chose to do is instead). Sketch out different views of the artwork (close ups/fragments). Use the artist’s ideas and style and create other images.

Comment on your work/observations/thoughts as you go. Some leading questions:

How are the elements and principles used?
How is this artist’s style different or similar to another artist you’ve studied? Compare and contrast.
What are the social/cultural contexts for this piece of art? (What is the artist trying to communicate about her culture, or another culture? Is she reacting to an event, a social practice, history, or something else?)
What is your personal connection to this piece?
How will it connect to your theme, or how will use use what you’ve learned from this artist to create something new?

Need to complete an "Inspiration Artist" Page for class? Check out the page dedicated to it - There is also a TON more examples of the 'Artist Analysis" style pages there.

Inspiration Artist "How-to" Page

This is a good example of beginning artist study. You can see the artist’s original picture (well labeled) with a section re-created beside it. The student recounts the feelings they get from the work, and why they are interested.

~Combining Artist Ideas/Styles with Your Own

These pages are often overlooked and so very important. This is where you show how you have taken ideas/skills/techniques from the artists and combine them with your own ideas, creating NEW IDEAS.

This is an oil paint re-creation of Anita Magasay-Ho’s artwork ‘Ginger Tea’ (above) but with the juxtaposition of Starbucks.

~Idea/Concept Development

This is a great process to use for each and every artwork, but it becomes life's blood in AP for your Sustained Investigation.

You need to take your time, and go through the process of development. Don't just go with your first idea (often the worst idea, but great first impression/gut feeling), keep going deeper and you will come to a stronger connection to your concept. Taking time now will help give you the energy, dedication and ability to experience the fabled "flow" while working on your art.

This is where you take your original ideas/images and begin to experiment with different mediums, distortions and/or combining of ideas. You can bring in other ideas. Explore….what if I did this? Or moved this? Or made this smaller/bigger/a different color….etc…

Try to use a variety of mediums. Of course quality is important – but so is the amount of work and the creativity of your ideas.

*NOT ALL SKETCHES NEED TO BE FINISHED – its more important that your ideas shine through.

Add small notes of intention around your sketch – discuss what parts you like, what you would like to add, refine, redo, etc.

This student is experimenting with crinkling up her self photos and practicing with various angles and different colour schemes.

~Composition Development

This is where you put all your ideas together and come up with possible compositions. It’s always good to have a least 3 different ideas for compositions.

When designing compositions – keep in mind different composition strategies to make your composition interesting

Rule of Thirds
Rule of Odds
Formal Balance
Distortion Techniques – change the size of things, distort the shape… etc..
Consider Principles of Design – change the emphasis, balance, etc.

When you choose your strongest composition, experiment with different color schemes and distortion/changing Principles of Design to rescale, reassemble, rethink compositions.

(No need to re-sketch composition ideas again and again. An easy trick is to choose your composition and then photocopy it onto drawing paper – then experiment with colors/textures)

Using the composition ideas above, the artist chose one what they thought was the strongest composition – and then experimented with various colour schemes.

This is a good example of composition ideas. It shows how the student has considered various compositions. This could be stronger if the student used more composition rules (listed beside) – but will still be a strong screen if the student explains her thoughts in text.

~Playing with Your Personal Interests

Aesthetics, Local/World Issues, Experiences, Hopes/Dreams Etc...

These pages could be purely for fun and investigation of the world around you! You are an artist, and artists are CURIOUS! Take some time for Play.

~Food Illustrations

~Fashion Designs

~Nature Journal

There is a whole page dedicated to Nature Journaling. Don't knock it 'till you try it, many students find they like having an excuse to do art outside and to stare at a ladybug for an awkward amount of time.

Nature Journaling Page

Blogs/Sites with lots of examples:

Journal Fodder Junkies (guys who started original '15 for 30')

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